When things don’t go to plan: The realities and challenges of user involvement in research

2006 Conference

This presentation is aimed particularly at professional and practitioner researchers working in health and social care or academic settings such as universities. It aims to discuss issues related to feedback from a previous INVOLVE conference. This concerns the challenges that may be faced by professional researchers when working with members of the public and when user involvement doesn’t work as well as expected. The presenter has a background working as a practitioner-researcher in the NHS and more recently in a University. Whilst many examples exist or are reported of successful user involvement, less reported are the tensions that occur in reality, which cannot always be anticipated or prevented. This means an important opportunity to learn from what went wrong may be lost. Participants will learn and benefit from sharing their experiences and from support from each other in identifying ways user involvement can be done better in future.